Dead Sea Transform in the context of "Ghab basin"

The Red Sea Rift is a mid-ocean ridge between two tectonic plates, the African plate and the Arabian plate. It extends from the Dead Sea Transform fault system, and ends at an intersection with the Aden Ridge and the East African Rift, forming the Afar triple junction in the Afar Depression of the Horn of Africa.

The Red Sea Rift was formed by the divergence between the African and Arabian plates. The rift transitioned from a continental rift to an oceanic rift. Magnetic anomalies suggest that the spreading rate on either side of the Red Sea is about 1 cm/year. The African plate has a rotation rate of 0.9270 degrees/Ma (million years), while the Arabian plate has a rotation rate of 1.1616 degrees/Ma.

The Gulf of Suez Rift is a continental rift zone that was active between the Late Oligocene (c. 28 Ma) and the end of the Miocene (c. 5 Ma). It represented a continuation of the Red Sea Rift until break-up occurred in the middle Miocene, with most of the displacement on the newly developed Red Sea spreading centre being accommodated by the Dead Sea Transform. During its brief post-rift history, the deepest part of the remnant rift topography has been filled by the sea, creating the Gulf of Suez.

North of the Gulf of Suez the rift becomes indistinct and its exact geometry uncertain, linking eventually to the Manzala rift beneath the Nile Delta.

The East Anatolian Fault (EAF; Turkish: Doğu Anadolu Fay Hattı) is a ~700 km long major strike-slip fault zone running from eastern to south-central Turkey. It forms the transform type tectonic boundary between the Anatolian sub-plate and the northward-moving Arabian plate. The difference in the relative motions of the two plates is manifest in the left lateral motion along the fault. The East and North Anatolian faults together accommodate the westward motion of the Anatolian sub-plate as it is squeezed out by the ongoing collision between the Arabian plate and the Eurasian plate.

The East Anatolian Fault runs in a northeasterly direction, starting from the Maraş triple junction at the northern end of the Dead Sea Transform, and ending at the Karlıova triple junction where it meets the North Anatolian Fault. Another 350 km (220 mi) strand of the fault exists north of the main strand known as the Sürgü–Misis Fault System.

The Maraş triple junction is a geologic triple junction of three tectonic plates: the Anatolian plate, the African plate and the Arabian plate.

The Maraş triple junction is found where the side-by-side African and Arabian plates, both drifting north and demarcated by the north–south trending Dead Sea Transform (itself an extension of the African Rift Valleys), come up against the Anatolian plate lying across their path at the East Anatolian Fault. The junction site is near the Gulf of Alexandretta, and is ~700 km distant from the Karlıova triple junction. After a long quiescence, the Maraş triple junction was ruptured by the violent 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake.

The Galilee earthquake of 1837, often called the Safed earthquake, shook the Galilee on January 1 and is one of a number of moderate to large events that have occurred along the Dead Sea Transform fault system that marks the boundary of two tectonic plates; the African plate on the west and the Arabian plate on the east. Intensity assessments for the event were VIII (Damaging) on the Medvedev–Sponheuer–Karnik scale and VIII (Heavily damaging) on the European Macroseismic Scale.

A 1977 assessment of the event that was published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America had the epicenter just north of the city of Safed and the magnitude of 6.25–6.5, but in 1997 seismologist Nicholas Ambraseys argued that the event may have been more substantial. The event was well-documented by the 19th-century missionary, archaeologist, and author William McClure Thomson. The region in which the earthquake occurred was formally part of the Ottoman Empire, but at the time it was under control of the Egyptians, who were occupying after they had seized it during conflict.